A former Ukrainian submarine commander who defected to Russia was killed on Thursday when a Russian woman acting on Kyiv’s behalf blew him up with a bomb hidden inside a trash bin, officials said.
The 32-year-old Russian woman, who was not immediately identified, allegedly received orders from Ukraine’s intelligence network to kill Robert Shageev, an officer in the Kremlin’s Black Sea Fleet, according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
Shageev, a Ukrainian deserter who joined the Russian army after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, was walking in Sevastopol at around 10 a.m. when a trash bin beside him exploded, according to Kyiv and Moscow outlets.
The blast was apparently so loud that residents mistook it for a drone strike, similar to the ones plaguing Russian forces in the area, Russian Telegram channels linked to security services reported.
The suspected bomber was quickly apprehended, with Russian officials claiming she confessed to the killing.
“Investigators established that she acted on instructions from Ukrainian special services and showed no remorse,” Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Kremlin-installed governor of Sevastopol, said in a statement.
Shageev was wanted by Ukraine for high treason over his actions as the acting commander of the Ukrainian vessel Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s only submarine during the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea.
During the invasion, Shageev hailed that his unit would hold out until the end, only for the commander to give up the submarine and defect to the Russian military.
Shageev has been previously accused of serving in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with his fleet allegedly among those that fired submarine-launched missile attacks during the war.
Ukraine has been previously accused of carrying out assassinations in Russia and abroad against Moscow officials and defectors.
The attack that killed Shageev coincided with a seperate incident in Sevastopol overnight that saw five Russian emergency service workers killed as they tried to dispose of a Ukrainian bomb, Razvozhayev said.
“Our guys were inspecting the area after a Ukrainian attack. An enemy munition detonated,” he added.
